To younus, I will kiss you in heaven
Performance (running as mark making), 2024
Made on the Ancestral lands of the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples
In this work, I ran the final sentence from a message posted to Queering the Map, an app that allows users to post public geotaged messages. The message was posted from northern Gaza, in the first month of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza strip.
This piece is a reinterpretation of my piece CRASH Course, a piece that honors my friend Quentin, a graffiti writer and runner who passed away in 2016. It is a prayer, a meditation, and a message.
By running Quentin’s tag, CRASH, I felt I was able to communicate with him, letting him know that I am continuing his legacy, and through the communion of ritual, running, and art making.
In this continuation, I hope to do the same, and to amplify the voice of the Palestinian who shared this message, to hopefully make it as loud as possible.
Running and movement is a way to tap into emotion and presence, a way to process grief. It feels impossible to comprehend the horrors we are witnessing in Gaza today. Messages like this one touch my heart even when we have been desensitized to the horror. It is also a way of memorializing and honoring the queer people of Gaza, who very much exist, despite counter-narratives of the occupier. It places the reader in their shoes and asks us not to look away from the horrors of colonization, the horror that US-backed Israel is inflicting on Palestinians.
